Jörg Fuhrmann

Jörg Fuhrmann works in care homes and hospices. He is a lecturer in palliative care and co-facilitator. He is also a trained CliniClown and as a former monk he has studied theology.

Your body clock– my body clock. Everybody has their own rhythm, or body clock, that they can in the most part determine themselves. We breathe, speak and eat at our own pace and in our own time and can therefore be completely at one with ourselves.

People suffering from dementia don’t live by our time schedules and rhythms, but rather in their own world. Unfortunately it’s not always possible for them to stick to their own schedules, because they are instead often forced into other “unnatural” schedules by carers, relatives and as a result of many other environmental influences. Dementia sufferers lose many abilities and skills over the course of their illness, but what they retain to the end are their emotions and their capacity for experience. They are often emotionally superior to us and experience the world and therefore also dying, which is also an emotional process, more consciously and in a more intense manner. Perhaps this illness is a good companion when it comes to dying with awareness and to being at peace with oneself –  without encountering the dispassion and materialism of our society, which often lets us die in a  discontented fashion.

Only those who have got a good feel for themselves and are emotionally connected with themselves can understand people with dementia and also perhaps better understand their way of dying.

Short Biography of Speaker

• Care home director
• Trained clini-clown
• 2005 – 2009 Masters in Palliative-Care in Salzburg
• 2000 nursing training in Vienna
• Trained gardener, former monk
• Studies in Theology